


Benefits of Bad Luck

by Novaya_Model



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Family, Gen, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-08-22 21:37:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8302043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Novaya_Model/pseuds/Novaya_Model
Summary: Elizabeth Grace never realized how bad her luck could be. It was intentional, to some degree. She didn’t like to focus on the bad - it made her feel helpless. She preferred to find the benefits of her bad luck.Elizabeth Grace never knew her biological father, and never really cared to. Even when her bad luck kept piling up, thoughts of him hardly entered her mind. So when the results from her DNA test were blacked out and the answers she was promised never arrived, she didn't dwell. She did what she always did; she moved on. That's one of the benefits of bad luck: you learn how to let go of what you can't control.





	1. Preview

**Author's Note:**

> This story follows a timeline consisting of flashbacks, which will be denoted at the beginning of a new scene. If there is no note, then the new scene is in the same setting of the previous scene.
> 
> The first chapter is a preview, made up of selected cuts from the existing text. No place in the timeline is indicated for scenes in the preview.
> 
> There are no major content warnings in play at the moment. Any content warnings that come up will be noted at the beginning of the chapter the content is in. 
> 
> Finally, I will admit right off of the bat that Iron Man 3 canon doesn’t exist in this story, for no reason other than I’ve never seen the movie and do not have a comprehensive enough grasp on the canon to effectively work it into the story. Other movies within Phases 1 and 2 of the MCU can be considered canon, up to the end (you know what I'm talking about) of Age of Ultron.
> 
> Happy reading, and please let me know what you think.

-0-

As time went on, Elizabeth eventually moved on from her early childhood, from her birthmother. There wasn’t anything wrong with Rebecca, per se. She was a troubled woman, but she tried her best to provide a good life for her illegitimate daughter.

Elizabeth grew to respect her for that, but the young woman was happy to be with the Gallaghers. She had a mother and a father who were both happy, healthy people. They thought of Elizabeth as their own and treated her with more respect than most parents give children. When she got older and things in her own life started getting turbulent – teenage angst was a bitch – they didn’t push her. They got her help when she asked for it, and let her make the mistakes she seemed determined to make.

The Friday before her fifteenth birthday, the Gallaghers took Elizabeth out from school for an impromptu trip. Elizabeth had been hinting how cool it would be to go to the Yosemite National Park over winter break, but the Gallaghers didn’t bite. After suffering from an ugly breakup and the loss of two of her closest friends in January, Elizabeth had been having a rough semester. The Gallaghers noticed this, as well as how hard she was working to keep her head above water, so they decided that she could use a little fun.

-0-

Ms. Wilson skimmed through the results of the DNA tests. In the beginning of these activities she never dreamed of looking through results before handing them back to the students. But after one-too-many torrid love affairs and previously unrevealed adoptions, she had taken to checking. Sure, opening another person’s mail is technically a felony, but it definitely wasn’t the worst thing going on in this town.

She was about halfway through the pile when a name caught her attention.

Listed under “Paternal Match” for one of her students was “Anthony Edward Stark, 40.”

Ms. Wilson checked the name at the top of the sheet. Elizabeth Grace Gallagher. The Bradley girl. The tired one with the bruises.

Well hot shit.

-0-

But this Thursday morning, Pepper was anxious. Tomorrow morning Tony would be boarding his private jet and flying off to some godforsaken country to sell some godforsaken weapon and it was all just very nerve-wracking. And yes, this is Tony’s job, and yes, he’s done this a hundred times, but her boss was going into a warzone and she was allowed to be unnerved by it.

Pepper tried to get her mind away from the overwhelming sense of foreboding as she scrolled through the morning’s emails.

Interview request.

Guest speaker request.

Consultation request.

Consultation request.

Interview request.

Interview requ-

Hello…

The email’s subject line was “DNA Results,” and the sender was ‘shwils4@oklak12.edu.’

Pepper opened the email, slightly dreading whatever “DNA results” could be linked to the infamous Tony Stark.


	2. "I'm not running a daycare center."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elizabeth and Zeke offer their help to the Avengers and we learn a little more about Elizabeth's history with trying to find her biological father

**May 2015**  
**New York, NY**  
**10:13 p.m**

“How do you even know this is where we’re supposed to be?”

“Because I know.”

“Wow, that was informative. Thank you so much. I understand everything now.”

Elizabeth scoffed and rolled her eyes, smirking towards her brother. “Stop being an ass, Zeke. Get us inside.”

Ezekiel rolled his eyes but abided by his sister’s demand, walking up to the electronic keypad that secured the front doors of the giant tower. With a calming breath, the young man placed his hand flat against the screen. Elizabeth watched with a muted intrigue as her half-brother’s eyes rolled back. Moments later, a faint ‘beep’ was heard and the glass door in front of them slid open.

“Well, we’re officially fucked now.” Ezekiel noted with an annoyed sigh.

Elizabeth smiled back at him as she walked into the lobby of Avengers Tower.

“So we might as well see it through.”

-0-

**May 8th, 2010**  
**Millsboro, OK**  
**1:56 p.m.**

Elizabeth Grace walked into classroom 340 B – Home Economics. There were two other students – loners, like her – already perched at their respective lab tables. Passing period had just begun, so Elizabeth didn’t expect anyone else to show up for another few minutes.

She wove through the small conglomeration of desks and moved towards the last desk in the far corner. Normally, she’d prefer to sit closer to the front, but this was the only left-hand desk in the classroom and she didn’t want to bother trying to move it.

The 17-year-old slid into the plastic chair and plopped her bag in her lap, digging out her notebook and pencil before sliding the bag under her desk. She marked the date in the top corner of a blank page. From then on, she doodled.

Her notebooks, homework assignments, and tests were all covered in her little doodles. Small cities, tall buildings, grand structures, everything she could imagine. Blake thought it was weird. All the kids he knew doodled flowers or swirls or stars. No one planned out entire infrastructures. At least no one other than Elizabeth.

The more she considered it, the more Elizabeth realized it probably was odd. But honestly, it soothed her. She liked planning - building - if only in her imagine. If plausible, she hoped to make a career from it. And for a long while, it did seem likely. After moving into the Bradley house, however, her priorities changed.

Students began piling into the classroom as passing period came to close. Mrs. Wilson was nowhere to be seen. Odd, but not unheard of. Elizabeth went back to doodling while the class waited.

About a minute later Mrs. Wilson finally arrived. She briefly apologized for her own tardiness as she scrambled to her desk, muttering something about a phone call that she had to take.

“Okay!” Mrs. Wilson called out with a smile as she slammed her books and papers onto the desk, “Guess what came in yesterday?”

“You’re test results?” A student near the back joked.

Mrs. Wilson’s eyebrow shot up under her bangs and a smirk played on her face. “Not my test results,” she teased as she opened a manila envelope.

The entire class was giddy. About a month ago they had sent in DNA samples to an ancestral tracking company, and everyone was eager to see what each of their results showed. Elizabeth was more eager than anyone.

She never knew much of her family, even when Rebecca was still alive. She never met her grandparents, didn’t know if she had any aunts or uncles, and never heard a word of her father other than “he’s not the greatest dad.” As a child, Elizabeth never understood why. As a young adult, she still didn’t. But, she figured it was none of her business. Rebecca was troubled and there had to be a reason. Maybe the single mom was trying to protect her daughter from a bad family or something.

While she accepted her mother’s choice, Elizabeth was still always curious about other things. She wanted to know more about her ethnicity, potential medical history, and things like that. And it wasn’t like there was anyone around she could ask, so the young woman jumped at the chance to have her DNA tested.

She watched closely as Mrs. Wilson passed out files, going desk-by-desk. She came upon Elizabeth last, placing the file face-down on the plywood desk and leaning towards the teenage girl.

“Come see me after class,” Mrs. Wilson told her softly before walking away.

Instantly intrigued, Elizabeth flipped the file over. Her brows furrowed as she glanced around the room at other students’ front pages.

Yup, so it was just her file that had all of the names on the paternal side blacked out. Okay then.

Though confused, Elizabeth wasn’t entirely perturbed at the withholding of this information. She wasn’t in the market for a father, after all, just information.

With that in mind, she continued to read the report.

Her most dominate ethnic factors were Swedish and Italian.

Cool.

She had an increased risk of developing breast cancer.

Not cool, but good to know.

She had a mild vitamin deficiency.

Not news.

Mrs. Wilson gave the students a few more moments to look over their results before calling for the class’s attention to begin the lesson.

As class carried on, Elizabeth found herself increasingly bothered by the black marks on her file. It was obviously done after printing, because the company could have just not put the names down if they didn’t want her to know for some reason. So in all likelihood, Mrs. Wilson blacked out the information herself. But why? What was on there that was so troublesome? And was that what her phone call was about? It’d be an awfully big coincidence if not.

By the time the bell rang, Elizabeth was ready to march up to Mrs. Wilson’s desk and demand answers. She didn’t, though. That wouldn’t be well-received. Instead, she walked gracefully and smiled pleasantly; greeting the teacher with a soft “You wanted to see me?”

“I take it you noticed?” Mrs. Wilson addressed casually, nodding towards the report in Elizabeth’s hand.

Elizabeth nodded.

“Listen Elizabeth,” Mrs. Wilson started, leaning back in her chair, “I started screening these reports a few semesters ago. There was this incident with a kid and his mom and his dad’s best friend, and it all got very messy. So now I go through the reports and make sure that we can get ahead of anything they might uncover.”

Elizabeth nodded again. “Okay, I get that,” she said, “But…I’m an orphan. No one here even knows my mother, much less my father.”

Mrs. Wilson sighed. “Elizabeth, I feel perfectly comfortable saying that everyone in this town knows your father. Hell, I’d say everyone in the country knows your father.”

“Please don’t tell me it’s Bill Clinton.”

“No,” Mrs. Wilson laughed, “It’s not Bill Clinton. But it is someone with a high profile. I’ve been in contact with his people, and they’ve requested that I withhold this information from you until they can come talk to you face-to-face.”

Elizabeth nodded once more and shifted uncomfortably. “And did they give any indication when that will be?”

Mrs. Wilson shook her head. “It sounded like they were at an airport or on a plane, so I’d say sometime soon. Don’t quote me on that, though.”

Elizabeth chuckled. “I won’t.”

-0-

**May 2015**  
**New York, NY**  
**10:15 p.m.**

Everyone froze at the sound of the elevator’s ‘ding’.

No one was supposed to be here. How did they even get the elevator working? This didn’t make sense.

The twins watched in guarded confusion as the Avengers – aside from the not-Hulk Hulk and the floating red man – began to brace for battle.

All eyes were on the hallway as two sets of calmly-paced footsteps approached where everyone had met. From the shadows of the otherwise quiet tower emerged two young adults. One was a girl, maybe 5’6” or 5’7”, with light skin and dark blonde hair that fell in tight waves. The other was a boy a good 5 inches taller than her, with light brown skin and neatly-trimmed hair and beard.

The boy was noticeably nervous, with tense shoulders and observant eyes. The girl, on the other hand, was far calmer. Her hazel eyes greeted the Avengers with easy warmth as a subtle smile graced her lips. For a moment, the twins thought that she might have been one of them. But the hostility that still hung in the air after she came into view proved that idea wrong.

“Hi,” she greeted with a small wave, “I’m Elizabeth, this is my brother Ezekiel, and we were wondering what the fuck is going on and how we may be of service to end it.”

“Seriously though, what the fuck is going on?” The boy – Ezekiel – demanded with a deep voice, crossing his arms over his chest as he came to a halt behind his sister.

“Look,” the Captain started, “I don’t know who you two are, but-“

“You need to get the hell out of here,” Stark finished, shooing them towards the hallway they arrived from. “I’m not running a daycare center.”

“No, you’re just running the world into the ground,” Elizabeth responded immediately, her once soft eyes staring hard into Stark’s brown ones, an unspoken challenged issued between them.

When her response was greeted with silence, Elizabeth continued on, addressing everyone in the room before.

“You don’t need to know everything, and I certainly don’t have the time to tell you everything,” she began, dropping her gentle voice and replacing it with an authoritative tone, “What I will tell you is this: my brother and I are powerful, and we know something is going on. We are here to help, and we are going to help whether you want us to or not, so it would be easier for everyone if some of you-“ she noted with a direct look to Stark “- could swallow your egos and accept our assistance.”

“What can you do?” The archer asked.

Elizabeth relaxed, though her defenses still seemed to up, as she turned to address him.

“My thing is – as far as I can tell – molecular manipulation. Zeke’s is cyberkinesis.”

“We’re also, apparently, ‘psychically inclined.’” Ezekiel added, rolling his eyes at “psychically inclined”.

“Shut the fuck up,” Elizabeth laughed, “You know it’s true. That’s why we’re here. You can’t deny it.”

“Still ridiculous,” he mumbled.

“You know what’s ridiculous?” Elizabeth asked, “Whatever the fuck is happening right now. What is happening, exactly?”

“You mean you don’t know?” Stark inquired with a cocked eyebrow, “I thought you were ‘psychically inclined.’”

“’Inclined’ is the operative word,” Elizabeth responded promptly, “It’s mostly general feelings – kind of a side effect of being what we are –“

“And what is that, exactly?”

“Different.” Elizabeth smirked, her eyes sparkling with another challenge, “We’re more in tune with things than most people. The majority of the time the feelings are nothing concrete, but not all of the time.”

“We’ve both been feeling off in the last few days,” Zeke explained. “Liz has been having dreams, too-“

“Mostly about you,” She said, still staring Stark dead in the eye, “But there was one about…him,” she noted, nodding towards Pietro. “I think there was, at least. But yeah, mostly you, which is why we’re here.”

“We figured that our feelings, her dreams, and your history meant that whatever was happening was directly related to you,” Zeke continued, “And given what we walked in on, I’d say we were right.”

“Which means the only question left is…” Elizabeth announced, turning towards the Captain, “What’s the plan?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The math for flight duration and time difference from New York to Eastern/Central Europe doesn't traditionally fall in line with what the AoU movie portrayed (which I took as the team arriving in Sokovia around dusk/sunrise after leaving New York at night), so I'm taking leniency with it. I don't know how much quicker a Quinjet is supposed to be compared to a regular commercial jet, so we'll just say a lot quicker.
> 
> And just so you know: you're not missing anything. I'm just trying to explain my reasoning for the time stamps given to the New York scenes.


	3. "I think she was cold..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: This chapter describes a parent’s suicide from the child’s eyes. This portion is the February 14th, 1998 flashback. Any important character development information to be gathered from this section will be published later in a character biography on my Tumblr.

**May 2015**   
**Sokovia**   
**6:48 a.m.**

She could feel herself screaming more than she could hear it. The vibration of her throat, the shaking of her body, the tears pricking the corners of her eyes. She knew there had to be sound, but she couldn’t hear it. She could only feel.

The pain was ~~horrifying~~ ungodly.

Her head was going to explode. She knew it. She honestly feared it. There was no way what was happening inside her head was natural. She pushed herself too hard and now she was going to die for it. There was no way she could survive whatever was happening to her brain.

Somewhere deep inside, some maternal instinct told her to stop screaming. She was on the last boat and she was undoubtedly scaring the civilians. She was a hero to them. She was a savior. She shouldn’t be screaming. She’s showing weakness and right now they need strength.

But she couldn’t stop the screams that erupted from her throat. She couldn’t stop the tears that fell from her eyes. She couldn’t stop the blood that poured from her nose. She couldn’t even think. She couldn’t hear or see or taste or smell. Only scream. Feel and scream.

-0-

**February 14th, 1998**   
**Oxnard, CA**   
**1:17 a.m.**

The house smelled weird. That was the first thing she remembered, the first thing that always played out in her head when that night returned to haunt her. The house smelled weird.

Elizabeth didn’t know exactly what was wrong about the smell, but she knew it shouldn’t be there. It may have been an instinctual reaction, or it may have been a sensitive child who didn’t like change. Either way, the smell that woke Elizabeth up that night bothered her enough to send her hunting for her mother.

The small girl shimmied out of bed – the hem of her princess nightgown falling around her knees – and padded across the thin hallway to her mother’s bedroom.

“Mommy?” Elizabeth asked softly, peering into the room from the open doorway. She remembered thinking that was odd. Her mother almost never slept with the door all the way open.

“Mommy?” She asked again, shuffling up to the side of the bed. Once she got close enough, Elizabeth noticed how empty the bed was. Her mother wasn’t there.

As she left the room, the young girl noticed the lights in the ground floor of the house were on. She carefully descended the staircase – the old carpet soft beneath her bare feet and the wood railing cold under the tight grip of her little hands. The smell got worse as she neared the bottom of the stairs.

“Mommy?” She called out into the living room. No response.

She walked through the lower level of the house, ignoring the scent the filled the rooms as she searched for her mother. She wasn’t in the living room, bathroom, computer room, or dining room. Finally, Elizabeth walked into the kitchen. The weird smell was getting worse and worse the closer she got. Maybe Mommy was cooking something weird and that’s where the smell was coming from.

Elizabeth turned the corner and saw what would be the start of the end of her life.

The oven door was open, but that wasn’t odd. What was decidedly abnormal, though, was that her mother was lying on it. Elizabeth’s mother had always told her to be careful around the oven, so why was she lying in it?

“Mommy?” Elizabeth called, walking up to the sleeping woman. The heat was wafting around her, and Elizabeth made sure not to burn herself as she tried to shake her mother awake.

Elizabeth kept shaking and calling out, but her mother never responded. After a few moments, the young girl swiftly made her way to the corner of the kitchen where the phone was and hopped up on the countertop. She picked up the cordless phone from the base unit and punched in 9-1-1 like the lady at school had taught her to.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“Hello?” Elizabeth asked nervously, not quite comfortable with talking to a stranger and more than a little anxious over the fact that her mother wouldn’t wake up.

“Hi sweety,” The man on the other end responded, his voice softer and more personable than before, “What’s your name?”

“Elizabeth.”

“Hi Elizabeth. Is everything alright?”

Elizabeth shook her head, tears pricking the corners of her eyes as her heart began pounding. “Mommy’s not waking up,” She answered.

“Is your mommy hurt?” The man asked softly.

“I dunno. She’s laying in the oven.”

The man paused, and Elizabeth was certain she could hear typing from his end of the line.

“Is the oven on?” he asked.

“Yeah…I think she was cold…”

The man on the other end of the line became decidedly more urgent, though Elizabeth could tell he was trying to keep his voice gentle.

“Okay, Elizabeth, sweety, I need you to go outside, okay?” he asked firmly. “Can you do that for me?”

Elizabeth glanced back at her mother, who still hadn’t woken up. “What about Mommy?”

“I’m sending people to help her right now, sweety,” The man told her. “I think I got your address from the phone, but can you go outside and confirm your house number for me? It should be on or around your mailbox.”

“Okay,” Elizabeth said softly, leaping off the counter top – phone in hand – and walking out of the house.

She padded down the cement driveway, careful to avoid any cracks. Her mother was having a bad enough night, and Elizabeth didn’t want to risk breaking her back. Once at the mailbox, Elizabeth rattled off the number painted on the curb.

“Okay Elizabeth, I have EMTs on the way. They’re going to help your mommy,” the man told her. “Elizabeth, can you tell me how old you are?”

“Almost 5.”

“Almost 5?” The man asked with a feigned excitement. “When’s your birthday?”

“February 17th.”

“Oh wow, that’s close. Do you know your birth stone?”

Elizabeth nodded. “Yeah, it’s the purple one. We talked about it in school.”

“That sounds fun,” The man told her. “Is purple your favorite color?”

“No, I don’t think so…”

“Oh? What is?”

“…pink.”

“What kind of pink?” The man asked. “Light pink, hot pink?”

“Hot pink!” Elizabeth shouted.

The man chuckled. “Hot pink is more fun, isn’t it? Okay Elizabeth, the ambulance should be just about there. It’ll be big with flashing lights. Do you see it?”

Elizabeth glanced down the street. A big white truck with flashing blue and red lights turned the corner drove towards her.

“Yes sir,” she answered.

The ambulance pulled to a stop in front of her driveway. Three people in uniforms jumped out. Two of them rushed into the house and one of them – Neil – walked over to her. He had a kind smile and gently asked her if he could see the phone.

Neil spoke to the man on the other end for a moment before hanging up and kneeling down in front of Elizabeth.

The commotion caught the attention of the neighbors, who had begun to file out of their own houses. The O’Brian family from down the street walked up. Their teenage kids – Patricia and Danny – took Elizabeth’s attention as their parents spoke with Keith.

Eventually, Mrs. O’Brian – Debbie – led Elizabeth and the teenagers back home. Mrs. Debbie said that Neil and the others were going to take Elizabeth’s mommy to the hospital, and that she and Mr. O’Brian – Patrick – were going to drive Elizabeth there to meet her.

Patricia gathered up some of Elizabeth’s spare clothes that the O’Brians always had on hand and took the little girl to get changed. Danny collected some snacks and water and coloring books, stuffing them all in an old backpack.

Mr. O’Brian returned and ushered his wife and Elizabeth into the station wagon. He told Patricia and Danny to behave and stay by the phone before he got in the car and took off towards the hospital.

Elizabeth spent the next few hours sitting in an empty daycare center at the hospital. She filled a few of the coloring book pages and had eaten the banana that Danny had packed her. For a little while a few nurses made her sit in a patient’s room, and a doctor came in and checked her heart and breathing. They also put a clamp-thingy on her finger. At first she thought it was all kind of fun – like a really realistic game of pretend. Eventually, though, she got tired and frustrated. No one was letting her see her mom and no one was telling her why. The sun was up, she hadn’t been back to sleep since the weird smell woke her up, and she had to go to school today.

Only Elizabeth wouldn’t be going to school today. Or tomorrow. Elizabeth wouldn’t be going back to school for another three months.

-0-

**May 2015**   
**Quinjet**   
**???**

“How you doin’, kid?” Zeke asked, playing with the hem of his borrowed athletic shirt.

Elizabeth shrugged, distinctly aware that her wide eyes and general alertness immediately negated any cool-and-collected façade she’d put forth. “It’s better than a commercial jet. Take-off was smooth, which is good.”

Her brother chuckled. “Yeah, but we’re landing in a war-zone.”

“If we don’t get shot down first.”

“Hey, that’s still a landing,” Zeke laughed. “A rough one, but a landing nonetheless.”

Elizabeth chuckled at her brother’s antics, her grip on the seat beneath her tightening as a wave of uneasiness overtook her. She inhaled deeply, adjusted her posture and face to better suit the façade she wanted, and looked around the quinjet.

The twins were standing in a far corner, conversing in hushed tones. From what she could pick up, it sounded like they were speaking a different language. The accents she heard earlier while changing began to make sense.

The archer was piloting and seemed as terribly alert as Elizabeth was, but in a different way. Elizabeth knew her vigilance came from her fear of flying, but his seemed to come from rage. He was a man on a warpath. She liked that. Passion is power’s greatest fuel.

The other guy – the Hulk guy, if she remembers correctly – was sitting across from her and Zeke, toying with a necklace in his hands. It was a small silver thing, with a tiny little charm that she couldn’t identify with. She did, however, notice how he was sitting in a seat labeled “Natasha.” The Black Widow was surprisingly absent, which was concerning in its own right. Adding that to Hawkeye’s warpath and the Hulk guy’s sentimentality told Elizabeth something very not-good happened to internationally renowned spy. To say that she was unnerved by this information would be a gross understatement.

The rest of the team – all men, she noticed – gathered around an island. They were openly discussing battle plans and strategies, but there seemed to be some disagreement on tactics and implementation. Elizabeth decided to tune them out until they had something more tangible to work with.

“So what are guys doing here?”

Elizabeth turned to face her brother, noticing that he was addressing the twins standing in the corner. They seemed just as shocked as everyone else by the blunt interruption of the subdued atmosphere as they looked at him with wide eyes and furrowed brows.

The girl – Wanda – shifted to face him, her arms crossed over her stomach. A sign of discomfort, Elizabeth noted.

“We helped create this mess,” she said, “We will help fix it.”

“You ever done this before?” Zeke asked as he and Elizabeth rose and joined the twins in the corner.

The boy – Pietro – shook his head.

Zeke shrugged. “Yeah, me neither.”

“But you have?” Pietro asked, looking at Elizabeth.

“Once or twice,” she nodded. “Not this exact scenario, of course, but apocalypses are fairly common occurrences…”

“That’s very comforting,” Wanda joked with a tight smile.

Elizabeth laughed quietly.

“It’s really not too bad,” she assured the other girl. “It’s dangerous and stressful, but the actual battle usually happens pretty quickly. And your adrenaline and survival instinct takes over, so you usually don’t even realize what you were in until it’s all over.”

“That’s got to be one hell of a crash.” Zeke said with distant wonder.

“Yeah, it’s not fun,” Elizabeth confirmed. “But it’s not the worst thing ever. A panic attack or two, a few weeks of nightmares, and sometimes you just randomly start crying, but it’s no worse than any other kind of PTSD.”

Pietro made a brief sound of positive acknowledgement as Wanda got a far-away look in her eyes. Zeke and Elizabeth shared a glance, confirming that they each noticed what they thought they noticed.

Before Elizabeth could decide how to respond to the new information, the Captain addressed the jet.

“Alright,” he said in an authoritative voice, “Here’s the plan…”


	4. She fucking knew it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: Parental death in the first section. Again, character development information derived from that scene will be compiled in a character biography on a later date.

**February 17th, 2006**  
**Oklahoma City, OK**  
**1:35 p.m.**

The Gallaghers took Elizabeth in three months after her mother’s suicide. By her seventh birthday, she was officially and legally part of their little family. It had easily been the best birthday of her life – far better than her fifth birthday, anyway.

As time went on, Elizabeth eventually moved on from her early childhood, from her birthmother. There wasn’t anything wrong with Rebecca, per se. She was a troubled woman, but she tried her best to provide a good life for her illegitimate daughter.

Elizabeth grew to respect her for that, but the young woman was happy to be with the Gallaghers. She had a mother and a father who were both happy, healthy people. They thought of Elizabeth as their own and treated her with more respect than most parents give children. When she got older and things in her own life started getting turbulent – teenage angst was a bitch, especially after moving to a new state and starting a new life, yet again – they didn’t push her. They got her help when she asked for it, and let her make the mistakes she seemed determined to make.

The Friday of her thirteenth birthday, the Gallaghers took Elizabeth out from school for an impromptu trip. Elizabeth had been hinting about how cool it would be to go to the Yosemite National Park over winter break, but the Gallaghers didn’t bite. However, after suffering from her first breakup and the loss of two of her closest friends in January, Elizabeth had been having a rough semester. The Gallaghers noticed this, as well as how hard she was working to keep her head above water, so they decided that she could use a little fun.

They were in the car and on the way out of town by 1:30 that afternoon. Elizabeth was on her internet-phone – a gift she received that morning – looking up the cool things they could do at the park while her mom loaded the car radio with CDs and her dad reviewed the printed list of directions.

Then … an uncanny sense of terror overtook her. Something bad was going to happen. Something very, very bad.

She had flashes of her mother’s limp body lying in the oven.

Something very, very, _very_ bad was going to happen.

Elizabeth looked out her window and saw a man – a very bad man – standing off in the distance.

His face was covered, as was most of his body. She could only see three things: a shiny sleeve covering his left arm, his brown hair, and the very large gun in his arms. And even though she couldn’t see his eyes, she knew he was watching them.

She watched, frozen in horror, as he aimed the giant gun.

He fired.

”Dad!” Elizabeth shrieked. Her body went numb and her vision blacked out. She waited for impact.

The concrete was hard underneath her excessively heavy body. In the distance, she heard an explosion and the accompanying screams. Her head shot up and looked towards the source.

The car … the car was a block away. And … on fire. Her parents were …

Elizabeth screamed in gut-wrenching horror. Tears poured down her face and her throat burned, but she didn’t stop screaming. She screamed as she tried to stand up, and screamed as she collapsed onto her knees. She screamed as bystanders approached her. She screamed as she tasted blood and mucus trickling down her esophagus.

And when she was screamed-out, she sobbed.

She sobbed horrible, sickening, mournful cries of agony. She sobbed as she wrapped her arms around her waist and rolled onto her side, curling into the fetal position in the middle of a sidewalk crowded by people observing the destruction. She sobbed as the fire department doused the flames of her family’s car and she sobbed as medical technicians patched wounds she received from a fall she didn’t remember taking.

Her sobs were eventually reduced to hiccups as she was loaded into the back of a squad car and driven to hospital for further examination and to give her statement.

The statement thing didn’t go very far, seeing how Elizabeth always broke into a new bout of cries whenever she tried to talk too much. She was kept in the hospital overnight for observation and was taken the station the next morning.

The police had tried finding a next-of-kin or emergency contact to come be with her, but both avenues turned up nothing. When asked about it directly, Elizabeth had informed the detectives that Gallaghers were lovely, but very private people. She knew a few faces of their friends, but not anything beyond nicknames.

Besides, she didn’t want to deal with someone else’s hysterics. She had been through this once before, about ten years ago, and she remembered how that went. She just wanted to get their questions over with and get put back in the system. Hopefully, she’d be twice lucky and get another wonderful, faith-restoring family.

-0-

**May 2015**  
**Sokovia**  
**5:56 a.m.**

Elizabeth and Ezekiel exchanged a brief glance as Ultron continued his spiel.

They both knew they were wondering the same thing. Ultron said that the device would immediately reverse its trajectory at any hint of physical manipulation. That means none of the Avengers could do anything to stop, or even slow it.

But Zeke wasn’t an Avenger, and the very nature of his powers should give no indication of physical tampering. Sure, he was still new and unskilled, and thing go easier for him when he has a physical connection to whatever he’s manipulating, but that doesn’t mean he can’t do it.

By all accounts, it should be fine.

However, neither Elizabeth nor Zeke were inherently keen on risking the lives of thousands of people on “should.” Not to mention that he would have to act without running it by everyone else, lest Ultron hear and try to stop him. And he would disobeying the orders that the captain had assigned on the Quinjet and potentially ruining their whole battle plan.

But still, was it worth it?

Elizabeth clenched her teeth and dashed up to her younger brother, intent on solving this puzzle quietly and quickly.

Zeke was ready for her when she arrived.

“The higher up this thing gets, the worse the damage will be when it falls,” he explained in a hush whisper as he tried to avoid undo attention from civilians and the forthcoming robot army.

“But will you be able to stop it?” Elizabeth challenged. “Like actually, fully stop it? Or just slow it down?”

Zeke shrugged. “Even if I just slow it down, the ultimate impact would be less of a catastrophe than otherwise.”

“What are you talking about?” Captain barked through the coms.

The siblings shared an uneasy look.

“Nothing,” Elizabeth responded, her hazel gaze hardening as she made up her mind. The risk was too severe and the reward was too minimal. He shouldn’t do it.

Zeke met her gaze, his own still uneasy as the decision whirled in his head. He won’t be able to save the people on the land mass, and won’t be able to save the people in the immediate vicinity, but if he can save even a few lives that were going to be lost otherwise, it would be worth it.

He didn’t like defying his older sister – especially since she had so much more experience with this stuff than he did – but he had to do what he thought was right.

“I might have a way to slow our ascent.”

-0-

She may not have supported the decision, but Elizabeth had to admit that she was grateful for it. Thanks to Zeke’s efforts, Sokovia was flying at a much slower rate, giving the rest of them time to fend off the robots and get the civilians onto SHIELD’s giant airship.

She was currently escorting an old man and his granddaughter to the nearest boat. They had both been separated in the panic and had tried to find each other before evacuating. Elizabeth understood their actions and admitted that she would probably act similarly, but she was still annoyed by the disregard for basic survival tactics.

From the corner of her eye, she noticed three robots flying towards them. In most scenarios she could freeze them where they were, but not today. After what felt like hours of fighting, her energy was drained. She could even feel the tinges of headache creeping up through her skull.

She had to conserve her energy and power, so she had to wait for them to get closer.

When the three enemies were only a few feet away, Elizabeth lifted her hand, focused her mind, and froze them in midair.

The little girl looked at the robots, paused in the middle of their attack, and started giggling. She tugged on her grandfather’s sweater and pointed to the scene. The older man simply nodded and hurried his granddaughter to the lifeboat down the block. After Elizabeth saw the SHIELD agents had the civilians under control, she took a moment to breath.

Everything was okay.

SHIELD had the civilians, Stark, Zeke, and Wanda had the flying city of death, and the Avengers had the robot army.

By some grace of some god, everything was going to be o-

_The last boat was being loaded._

_Hawkeye left to fetch a little boy trapped under debris._

_An enemy jet was in the air._

_Machine gun fire._

_A new man, not in the New York battle._

_He was shot. Riddled with bullets._

_A new girl collapsed to the ground, screaming._

_The man collapsed, blood pouring from his wounds, electric blue eyes staring vacantly._

_Hawkeye and the little boy were safe._

Elizabeth froze as her dream came rushing back to her. All of her other dreams from the past week have been about Stark, and occasionally a few other Avengers. All except that one.

She knew she recognized him. She _fucking_ knew it.

She felt her eyes widen as her heart began pounding.

She had to stop it. She didn’t know how, but she had to.

-0-

Her feet beat against the hard pavement, her lungs burning as the thinning atmosphere took its toll.

She had to stop it.

The roar of the airship’s turbines grew louder. She was close. But was she close enough.

As she sprinted through the jungle of toppled buildings and destroyed infrastructure, the horizon began to break. She could see everything from the dream. She saw Hawkeye freeing the little boy from the debris, she saw the Captain and Widow talking, she saw Pietro catching his breath…

That explains why he didn’t out run the bullets. He’s pushed himself to the limit today, just like she has.

In the clear blue of the sky, she saw the jet rise into view.

She thinks she screamed, but she couldn’t be sure.

The dream unfurled before her.

Bullets impacted the surface of the ground. Hawkeye turned his back to the incoming fire, protecting the boy with his own body. Pietro saw and ran to stop it, pushing Hawkeye and the boy behind an overturned car.

Terror ripped through Elizabeth’s body, and she knew she screamed that time.

Before she could catch herself, before she could judge the choice she was making, she raised both of her hands, focused every last bit of energy and power she had, and froze everything. Everything.

The airship. The jet. The bullets. The people. The flying fucking city.

Everything.

Her vision was blacking out. Her fingers were going numb.

_Not yet._

She ran full-speed to Pietro, bending at the waist and tackling him the ground, behind the car shielding Hawkeye and the boy.

The gunfire began again.

Her vision was almost entirely black.

She felt the pressure of hands on her arms.

Her own hands were cold.

Did someone just say her name?

-0-

Her body went limp in his arms.

He shifted to cradle her now hanging head.

He called her name once again, praying that she would respond.

Hawkeye left to bring the child to the boat. The captain took his place.

“Hey,” Rogers said softly, placing a hand on his shoulder, “go get her brother and your sister. I’ll get her on the ship. The medics will take care of her.”

Pietro wanted to argue.

There was no way for the medics to take care of her. She wasn’t shot or injured. She just… passed out. How were they going to fix that? There was no way.

“Maximoff,” the captain said, his voice stern, “finish the mission. Other people need you right now. Your sister needs you.”

It was a cheap shot, Pietro noted, but an accurate one.

The young Sokovian rose to his feet, gently passing Elizabeth’s unconscious body into the captain’s waiting arms. He watched as the captain turned and walked towards the boat, Hawkeye taking in the scene with observant eyes. Pietro almost chuckled as he recalled the look his father used to give himself and Wanda when they would walk off to school. A father’s concern was an unmatched force.

With a sigh, the young man turned and ran towards the center of city where his sister and Ezekiel waited for him.

-0-

**May 2015**  
**Sokovia**  
**6:49 a.m.**

She could feel the rough texture of someone’s hands cupping her face. It was a strange feeling, one she wasn’t used to. The novelty of it pulled her back to reality, if only slightly.

She could hear someone trying to talk, maybe even trying to talk to her. The difference in pitch and pattern separated the undistinguishable words from her pained screams. The voice sounded deep, which explained the size of the hands.

Slowly, the pulling continued.

“Printessa,” the voice commanded softly. Later, Elizabeth would recall a minor twinge of desperation in the voice. At the moment, however, she could only just focus on the words, themselves.

“Printessa,” the voice repeated as her screaming continued. She felt a thumb brush back and forth across her cheek, lulling her into full consciousness. As the new sensations flooded her senses, Elizabeth was finally pulled back from the haze of ungodly pain that overcame her.

With great hesitation, she unscrewed her eyelids.

Electric blue eyes were the first thing she saw. The blatant worry in them was the second.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she registered that she was still in pain. She registered the feeling, smell, and taste of the blood running down her mouth and neck. And she registered the sensation of the Sokovian speedster shifting his fingers and applying pressure to some spots along the side and back of her head.

But her main focus was the striking blue of his eyes, the warmth of his skin, and the security she felt within his embrace.

Before she could ponder the oddity further, she was out like a light.

The last thought in Elizabeth’s overworked mind was one word, a word she had been looking for since she felt his skin on her’s …

_Home._


	5. "That's the girl?"

**May 2015**  
**Docking bay of the Helicarrier**  
**6:50 a.m.**

A team of emergency medical responders rushed to the last boat, ready to address whatever injuries the shrieking girl they were warned about had sustained. However, beyond the sounds the weeping civilians and commanding officers’ orders, there was silence.

In the arms of one of the new team members – some guy with white hair – was an unconscious young woman. Her mouth, chin, and neck were covered in blood that seemed to have poured from her nose, and her cheeks were stained with drying tears. A young man hesitantly observed the two from the other end of the boat.

“Get her to the medical bay,” Captain Rogers commanded.

The responders nodded curtly, wheeling forward a gurney to the edge of the boat. The white haired man stood with the girl cradled in his arms. As he gently placed her on the cushioned gurney, the young man at the end of the boat approached the group.

“Do we know what happened to her?” he asked, an almost panicked worry shining from his brown eyes.

The responders remained silent as they bound her safety straps.

“I don’t know what the fuck happened,” one of the lower-level officers admitted. “It was like everything froze in place for a second, except her.”

“Everything?” the young man questioned urgently.

The officer nodded. “Yeah, the city, the people, the attack jet, the bullets. Everything just stopped. Except for her, I mean.”

As they rolled the young woman towards the medical bay, the responders lost track of the young man’s conversation with the officer. The last thing they heard was him vehemently denying the possibility of what everyone on the Helicarrier witnessed.

-0-

“You don’t understand,” Ezekiel urged. “She doesn’t have that kind of power.”

The Captain sighed as he led the group to the conference room Hill directed them to.

“What kind of power _does_ she have?” He asked, the frustrations of the past week leaking into his tone of voice.

“She can freeze things,” Zeke explained, “but not like _that_. There are limitations. Only so many people, only within physical barriers, only a certain total density or something, stuff like that. There’s no way in hell she would have been able to freeze an _entire fucking landmass_ , not to mention everyone on it and an incoming fighter jet.”

Wanda’s brows knitted together as their group filed into the open room, standing along the walls and around the table. Except for Clint. Clint sat.

“I thought she said her gift was molecular manipulation?” Wanda inquired.

“It is,” Zeke told her, nodding furiously. “That’s how she does it. She doesn’t stop time; she stops _molecules_ or something…”

The other members of the team, beaten, bruised, and tired beyond comprehension, shared confused glances.

Zeke groaned loudly. The world just almost ended, he was on some weird fucking ship with the actual goddamned Avengers, his sister was probably dying for all he knew, and he was totally alone in trying to figure out why.

“Look,” he shouted, “I don’t _pretend_ to know everything, alright? I don’t fucking understand any of this! It’s been a fucking year and still _none_ of this makes sense to me, okay? What I _do_ know, however, this that there is no way on God’s green earth that Lizzie should have been able to do what they’re saying she did.”

“Alright,” Clint said, groaning as he sat up, “let’s backtrack. What do you know of her powers? When did she first get them?”

“She was 18,” Zeke said dejectedly as he found a place in an empty chair.

“How?”

Zeke shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It just kind of happened, I think? I think she saw some kid running into the street and she froze him and the on-coming car.”

“But nothing else?” Captain Rogers asked.

“No,” Zeke said, “and the freeze didn’t last long. She barely had enough time to get the kid out of the way before everything resumed.”

“Has that changed at all?” Rogers asked. “Has she gotten better control over it?”

Zeke nodded. “She’s been training it since day one…”

As the men fell into the flow of their conversation, Wanda approached her brother, who was lurking in the corner of the room.

“Pietro?” she said quietly as she placed a concerned hand on his arm. “Brother, are you alright?”

He was not alright, not hardly. The girl, Elizabeth, the one who offered her assistance in cleaning up their collective mess with no provocation, was suffering because of him. He knew very well that he wasn’t going to survive that run. He was too tired and there were too many bullets and they were going too fast. Even if he could have avoided one or two of them, he would never have been able to avoid every last one. He knew this, and he knew that he couldn’t let the Hawkeye and the boy die because of mistakes made by himself and his sister. He understood the sacrifice he was making.

What he didn’t understand was Elizabeth. She had nothing to atone for, and she had to have known that what she was doing was dangerous to her. What was her motivation? Could someone be so selfless as to sacrifice themselves for nothing?

Taking a shaky breath, Pietro blinked away twinge of tears he felt and shook his head. He offered his sister a weak smile and small hug, kissing the top of her head as she held him close.

“Where is everyone?” The captain asked as the god entered the conference room.

A tattered Thor sighed and placed his hammer on a nearby countertop.

“Natasha is addressing her wounds in the infirmary,” he informed the group. “Banner is alive, but in the wind. The Vision and the Colonel are handling reconnaissance and searching for Stark.”

Rogers and Hawkeye grew alert.

“Tony hasn’t checked in?” Rogers asked.

Thor shook his head. “He was under the city at the time of detonation. It is likely he was knocked off course by debris, but the new computer-voice-thing confirms that he is alive.”

The room then grew quiet. With the majority of their team accounted for and the civilians safe and Ultron stopped, their adrenalin crash finally hit.

As Thor examined the room filled with friends – both old and new – a particular absence struck him.

“Where is the other girl?” He asked. “Elizabeth?”

Wanda noticed the way Pietro tensed at the mention of the young woman’s name. She also noticed Elizabeth’s own brother, Zeke, had very little reaction.

“She’s in the med-bay,” Hawkeye informed him. “She was pretty severely injured near the end of it all.”

“Will she be well?”

“Question of the moment, isn’t it?” Ezekiel responded quietly, his eyes downcast and his gaze distant.

Pietro brushed pass his sister and walked out of the room.

-0-

**May 2015**  
**Medical bay of the Helicarrier**  
**7:00 a.m.**

“She might need a transfusion, so run her blood and get a type-match,” one of the attending physicians told her subordinate. “And make sure to check for any irregularities. This girl is powered and we don’t want any surprises mid-transfusion.”

The younger doctor nodded diligent and took the young woman’s blood sample into the adjoined lab.

Natasha observed the interaction from a few beds away as a nurse stitched up her leg and dressed her bruised ribs. She looked at the young woman lying unconscious on the twin-sized mattress, dried blood trailing from her nose to her chest. The EKG and EEG monitors they had attached to her indicated that she was perfectly stable, but the blood definitely countered that story.

“What happened to her?” The red head asked.

The nurse tending to her shrugged. “Don’t know. We saw her freeze everything when the gunfire started, but one of the new guys said it was impossible.”

“Why?” Natasha asked.

“Something about ‘not having that kind of power,’” the nurse told her as she tied-off the last stitch. “The main theory seems to be that she pushed herself too hard and her body responded negatively.”

Natasha nodded silently, her gaze still on Elizabeth.

The nurse continued, “Witnesses say she was screaming bloody murder. She didn’t stop until that white-haired boy came and helped her. She was unconscious by the time the boat docked.”

“At least she wasn’t screaming,” Natasha smirked.

“Right?”

“The blood’s being run through the system now,” the young doctor announced as he returned from the lab. “I didn’t notice any immediate irregularities, but the computer will catch anything I didn’t.”

“Good,” the older doctor affirmed. “I want to get her a CT scan as soon as possible, and possibly an MRI.”

The younger doctor nodded. “I’ll let the guys downstairs know.”

“Thank you,” his attending responded. “May I help you, sir?”

Natasha looked to the open doorway, slightly surprised to see Pietro lurking in it.

“You okay Speedy?”

Pietro’s electric-blue eyes were torn away from Elizabeth’s frighteningly still body as he looked to Natasha.

“Yes, I am fine.” He confirmed as he entered the room. “Are you well?”

She shrugged. “I’ve been worse. How is everyone else?”

“Stark is unaccounted for,” he told her. “The robot and the other one, the… War Machine? …, are looking for him.”

“And the others? Your sister and Liz’s brother?”

“They are fine,” he said. “They are safe.”

“Good,” Natasha nodded, her gaze falling to Elizabeth. “Do you know what happened out there?”

Pietro didn’t respond. His attention was glued to the girl lying on the bed before him. Her pallor was sickly and she was still covered in blood. Why the hell hadn’t anyone cleaned her up yet?

“Speedy?” Natasha asked, sliding off of her bed and limping over to Elizabeth’s.

“The others are in a conference room on the third level,” he told her, distinctly ignoring her previous question.

Natasha took the hint, patting the young man on the arm before hobbling out of the medical bay and towards the conference room.

As the doors swiped shut, Pietro looked around the room for something to clean up Elizabeth. He turned around and approached the sink mounted on the wall behind him, wetting a paper towel and returning to the young woman’s side. Just as he started wiping away the blood around her collar bone, a beeping from an affixed room grabbed his attention.

One of the S.H.E.I.L.D doctors dropped the clipboard she was writing on and checked the computer screen. Pietro watched as her eyes widen, staring at the screen as she clicked and typed. Once the reality of whatever she was seeing set in, she looked up through the window and locked eyes with Pietro. The doctor peeked her head through the open door.

“Where’d you say Tony Stark was?”

-0-

**May 8, 2008**  
**Somewhere between Malibu and Millsboro**  
**2:30 p.m.**

“That’s the girl?” Happy asked, looking at the picture on Pepper’s screen.

“That’s the girl,” Pepper confirmed, her heart pounding as she looked at her boss’s daughter.

“Well,” Happy said, “at least we’ll be able to recognize her, with eyes like those.”

“Yeah…” Pepper agreed blankly, staring at the young woman’s hazel eyes. Something about them looked so familiar. Almost like she’s seen a different version of them. She could see the influence of Tony’s deep brown, but she couldn’t place where the green came from.

“She lives in Oklahoma?” Happy asked, snapping Pepper from her daze.

“Yes,” Pepper answered concisely. “She was born in Oxnard, but now she somehow ended up in a tiny little town called Millsboro.”

“Who’s her mom?”

“No idea,” Pepper admitted. “The teacher – Mrs. Wilson – wouldn’t tell me much. Something about confidentiality-“

“She was going through students’ mail.”

“I know. But regardless, I couldn’t get the information from her. She said that it would be to us to ask the girl – Elizabeth – when we meet her.”

Happy shifted in his seat. “And when will that be?” He asked.

Pepper looked at her watch.

“We’ll be landing in Tulsa in about 3 hours. From there it’s a 40 minute drive.”

“So with the time difference we’ll arrive…”

“Just in time for dinner,” Pepper told him, settling into her seat and glancing out the window. Four hours and one dinner were going to change everything they’d ever known.

This day couldn’t get any stranger.

Just then, her Stark Industries cell phone rang. The caller idea identified a generic hospital, but Pepper knew it was Rhodey’s secure line.

“James?” she answered, her tense nerves becoming even more agitated by the fact that Rhodes was calling her when Tony was supposed to be with him. Knowing Tony, if either of them needed to contact her they would do through Tony’s personal phone, not a military one.

Happy, sitting on the other side of the small table, watched Pepper’s expression change from worry to horror. The edges of her eyes turned red as she covered the bottom of the phone and turned her attention to him.

“Turn this plane around,” she commanded. “We need to get home.”

Happy shot her a confused look.

“What about-“

“Now, Harold,” She said firmly, tears beginning to form. “There was an ambush. Tony is missing, and we need to get home.”

As Happy took off to the cockpit Pepper turned her attention back to her phone. In the back of her mind she made a note to reschedule their meeting with Elizabeth until the situation was resolved. Rhodey said the insurgents probably didn’t take him far and that they’d likely find him within a week or two. Once she got the call that her boss was once again safe, she would address Elizabeth and everything that came with her.

Unfortunately, two weeks turned into two months, which turned into three months, which turned into Iron Man, which turned into a monumental can of worms that never seemed to stay closed for long.

The story of the teenage girl in Millsboro, Oklahoma with striking hazel eyes and a paternal DNA match to Tony Stark was once the most complicated thing the Stark circle had to deal with. However, terminal health situations and the Avengers and consistently unaddressed PTSD eventually pushed Elizabeth Grace Gallagher out of Pepper and Happy’s minds.

Neither of them would remember the girl and her hazel eyes until they were face-to-face with her so many years later.

-0-

**May 2015**  
**Helicarrier conference room**  
**7:15 a.m.**

“Tony Stark has a kid?”

“Am I the only one _not_ surprised by that?” Clint asked.

“Dude, seriously?” Zeke asked. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he had like, 10.”

“Wait,” Steve said, “how do we even know this?”

The doctor pulled up the test results on her tablet and handed it to the captain.

“We ran her blood sample through the computer to check for any irregularities in the event she needed a transfusion,” she explained. “Every Avenger’s DNA is in our system, including Stark’s. The match came up pretty quickly as a potential donor.”

“Does she need a donor?” Zeke asked as he sat up in his chair.

“No,” the doctor answered. “The bleeding has stopped and her body’s natural reserves should be more than able compensate.”

Steve passed the tablet around the table.

“Do you think he knows?” He asked.

“Not a chance,” Natasha responded. “Did you see their interaction back at the Tower? They’re total strangers to one another.”

“We should call Maury,” Clint commented, earning some short, almost humorless laughs from his teammates.

“Well, Rhodes said they found him, so he should be on board in a few minutes,” Natasha said. “I don’t think we have time to wait for Maury.”

“Who is ‘Maury’?” Thor whispered to Steve.

“It’s a long story,” Steve whispered back.

Zeke leaned over and took the tablet from Natasha. He scrolled through the information on the screen, looking to confirm the computer’s conclusion. From the admittedly limited knowledge he had on DNA and paternity testing, everything looked accurate. There was a 99.9% chance that Tony Stark was his older half-sister’s father.

“So,” Zeke said as he set the tablet down, “who’s gonna tell them?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s super late and that got super long, but I’m glad it’s done! From here on we’ll be seeing more of Elizabeth’s relationships with Pietro, Tony, and the others develop.


	6. "Her father is most certainly not Bill Clinton."

**2007-2008**   
**Millsboro, OK**

Luck was never really on Elizabeth’s side. Maybe losing three parents before she turned 14 should have been an indicator, but Elizabeth never realized how bad her luck was until she was assigned to the Bradley house one year after the Gallaghers died.

The Bradley house was the horror story she was thought of whenever someone mentioned “foster care.” The physical house was a piece of moldy, unkempt garbage, and the Bradleys were worse.

Or really, Mr. Bradley was worse, seeing as Mrs. Bradley had skipped town maybe two weeks after Elizabeth had shown up and was never seen or heard from again. But Mr. Bradley made sure to make up for any horribleness that Elizabeth, Blake, and Caitlin might have been missing out on.

Elizabeth was the oldest of the three outcasts, having just hit her fourteenth birthday not too long ago. Blake was next at 12 years old, and Caitlin was just a toddler. Blake and Caitlin had it extra rough, as Blake was deaf and Elizabeth presumed that Caitlin was somewhere on the autistic spectrum, if her proclivity for sensory overload and avoiding most social contact were any signs. And while many kids with these disabilities do just fine, Mr. Bradley had no patience for those “freaks.” In fact, Elizabeth was dead-sure that he only kept them around for the added income from the state. That income, of course, was never used for its intended purpose of assisting the kids. No, no, Bradley’s booze habit was far more important.

Along with the booze came the short temper. Bradley often got angry with Blake and Caitlin for not responding promptly or for generally making his life more difficult. He enjoyed hitting things when he was angry, which is probably was Mrs. Bradley ran out on him.

Elizabeth took her place as eldest sibling and most-abled as an assignment to protect the kids from Bradley’s temperament. She took her own beatings with a strong will that came from seeing too much, too young, and was sure to redirect his rage with her siblings onto herself whenever she was around. And his rage was so common that she made it a point to be around a lot.

Part of her wanted to start a part-time job after school, but Bradley’s strict curfew and unpredictable rage dashed that hope. However, she knew she needed to start collecting her own money. She needed to be able to pay for extraneous things for herself and the kids, since Bradley certainly wasn’t going to do it. If Blake needed new shoes, she needed to make sure he got new shoes. If Caitlin needed glasses, she needed to make sure Caitlin got glasses. If the three of them needed to run away, they needed funds to do that.

A few weeks into the fall semester of her junior year, Elizabeth got an idea. After subtly showing him her Accounting I homework, Elizabeth was able to convince Bradley to let her handle the house finances. After all, she was acing accounting, so she clearly knew what she was doing.

As the weeks went by, Elizabeth was able to build up a nice little economic cushion for herself and her siblings, while making sure Bradley still had plenty of money for his booze.

She used the extra cash to buy supplies for Blake to use, in case of an emergency. She packed a small backpack with a change of clothes of him and Caitlin, as well as a flashlight, two water bottles, some nonperishable snacks. She explained to Blake – with what little sign language she had picked up – that if things got _bad_ , he was to grab Caitlin, take the backpack, and sneak out the bedroom window with the lose screen. He was to run into the woods and make his way to the next town. He was _not_ to go to the neighbors, not in a town like this.

Blake hated the idea, but he knew Elizabeth and he knew she’d refuse to budge. So with great reprise, he hid the backpack under his bed and planned out different routes through the woods in his head.

Months passed with little excitement. Elizabeth is certain that some people noticed the bruises and the black eyes and the split lips, but those are the kind of things that people in these kind of towns like to ignore.

Near the end of the school year, Elizabeth’s home economics teacher told the class about a “fun activity.” Together, the class was going trace their family lineage. Or, rather, the class is going to swab their cheeks and pay some company to do it for them.

Normally, Elizabeth would never bother wasting her limited money on something so frivolous. She skipped field trips, she didn’t pay extra for more interesting dissection specimens, and she didn’t get a class ring or yearbook. However, this was something that had her attention.

Elizabeth’s mother – Rebecca – had never been very open about her family. Elizabeth didn’t know her grandparents, or if she had any aunts or uncles. And Rebecca also made sure that Elizabeth never knew a thing about her father, other than the fact that he would be “no good” to have around. When Elizabeth was five, she didn’t have the mental capacity to argue about it. And by the time she was older she had the Gallaghers and didn’t care about it. But now, now she had no one. She was completely alone, and her curiosity was piqued.

So she withdrew $50 from her secret stash and took the test that April. The results were to be in by May, so now, she waited.

-0-

**May 2015**   
**Helicarrier conference room**   
**7:20 a.m.**

Tony Stark sat across the empty table from 21 year old Ezekiel Scott. Neither man knew exactly what was supposed to be said between the two of them. The team had promptly filed out of the room when Tony entered it, muttering something about Zeke needing to speak with him, and Zeke had no clue how to approach the topic of telling Tony Stark that he had a 22 year old daughter.

“So what’s up kid?” Tony asked, breaking the silence and shocking Zeke out of his train of thought.

“Uh… not Sokovia, anymore?” Zeke timidly joked.

Tony scoffed and smirked, appreciating the poor taste and bad pun. A crappy joke was always a good way to break some tension in Tony Stark’s book.

“What did you want to talk about?” Tony asked, settling into his seat. “And where’s your sister? No offense, but she really seems to be the more talkative of the two of you.”

Zeke nodded. _Probably gets it from her father_ , he thought to himself. The young man shifted uncomfortably, mapping out exactly how he was going to go about his explanation.

“Elizabeth was taken away by a medical team,” he began. “She pushed herself to far near the end of the battle and collapsed on the boat that brought her in. She’s stable now, but she’s still unconscious and lost a bit of blood.”

“Will she be okay?”

“Probably,” Zeke answered, noting the sincerity in Stark’s question. “The thing is – the thing I wanted to talk to you about, that is – is that the medical team had to run her blood through their system in case she needed a transfusion. When they did that, they discovered something.”

Zeke rose from his chair, toying with the covered tablet in his hands as he paced around the room.

“Liz and I are only half-siblings, you know?” He said, glancing back at the older man. “We share a mother, Rebecca. I’ve lived with my father my whole live, and Liz has been in the system since Rebecca killed herself about 20 years ago.

“Rebecca never told Liz about her father, or about any of her family. Lizzie never really bothered to find out, except for one time in high school, I think. But when she got those DNA results back, the paternal information was blacked out by her teacher or something. I don’t remember the rest of it, but I know she didn’t care enough to look deeper into it…”

“What are you getting at, kid?” Tony asked, his shoulders rigid with tension as he anticipated the ending to this story. 20 years ago, no father, DNA tests… it was pretty much the exact conversation he hoped he would never be part of.

“Just let me get there,” Zeke said, fiddling with the tablet. “So she still doesn’t know who her father is, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know, either. And the whole reason the teacher blacked out the test results was because her father was a public figure or something and Liz was all like ‘Please tell me it’s not Bill Clinton,’ and her teacher was all like ‘It’s not Bill Clinton’ and according the results that came up after running her blood through the S.H.I.E.L.D database her father most certainly is _not_ Bill Clinton.”

Zeke turned to face the billionaire superhero as he finished rambling, clutching the tablet to his chest. Stark sat dead-still, staring hard into Ezekiel’s eyes, looking for any potential sign of deception. The two stayed in silence for what felt like hours, trapped in a battle of wills.

“Give me the damn tablet,” Tony snapped.

Zeke quickly obliged, sliding the tablet across the table. He watched with bated breath as his sister’s father scrolled through the test results, analyzing each and every detail. He watched as Stark’s eyes zeroed in on the bottom right-hand corner – where Zeke knew the percentage of the match was listed – before losing focus entirely. He watched as Stark snapped the tablet’s cover shut and tossed the device on the table with a loud ‘thud’ before storming out of the conference room, grabbing a passing agent and demanding to know where the medical bay was.

-0-

**May 2015**   
**Medical bay of the Helicarrier**   
**7:26 a.m.**

Pietro had just about finished cleaning Elizabeth of the blood that covered her, carefully wiping a dampened paper towel under her nose and around her lips. It had taken numerous towels and a bit of soap, but she didn’t look nearly as bad now. She didn’t look like she was dying, at the very least.

He could sense Wanda watching him from where she stood by the door. She had come down to inform him of the news from the conference room.

“She is not what I would expect from a child of Stark,” Wanda had said as she gazed down to the unconscious girl her brother was caring for so gently.

Pietro had no response to offer.

As Wanda came to understand that she was intruding on… something… she stepped back, giving her brother space to work out whatever was going on in his head.

The doors next to Wanda swooshed open, drawing her attention away from her brother and the girl that captured him so completely. In the doorway stood Tony Stark, beaten, battered, and frantic. Wanda didn’t have to read his mind to know that he knew. The terror in his eyes as he took in the sight of Elizabeth – his daughter – lying unconscious on a hospital bed with wires and tubes connecting her to various machines told Wanda more than enough. The young woman silently thanked her brother for cleaning Elizabeth of the blood that once covered her; as such a sight certainly would’ve made the situation all the worse.

Stark slowly approached the bed, almost as if he were afraid of what he would see if he got too close. Wanda noticed the slight twitch of his hand as he got closer.

“Pietro,” she called softly to her brother. When his eyes met hers she nodded toward the door, silently telling him that it was time to leave. After a moment’s hesitation, Pietro complied, tossing the paper towel in a nearby bio-waste bin on his way out. Taking a moment to glance behind him, he noticed Stark’s legs shaking. He rushed into the adjacent lab and grabbed a chair, setting it behind Stark just as the man collapsed.

As Pietro walked out of the room once more, he was haunted by the look on Stark’s face. The wonder, the terror, and the tears in his eyes. When he saw that, the Sokovian finally knew what the pit in his stomach had been telling him all along: he and Wanda were wrong about Stark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: More of a filler chapter than anything else. Sets up the foundation for Tony’s relationship with Elizabeth. We’ll get from point A to point B in the next chapter, where Elizabeth should be waking up and Pepper should be making an appearance, if all goes according to plan.
> 
> Let me know what you think!


End file.
